there are any number of reasons why i could rant on and on about pat robertson and his call to off chavez…most of them are no brainers and don’t even need to be repeated (or maybe they do given that he felt comfortable calling for murder on a christian program!)…either way, i’m going to go another route with this story.

hugo chavez.

i was talking to a friend who was disgusted by dear pat’s comments but mentioned in passing that chavez is probably a maniac as well. which got me to thinking…how much do we really know?

the big problem when talking about politicians anywhere is that it is difficult to get to the truth. they tell their story, their opponents tell another story and the media mixes the two together with a few outside opinions and there you have it…a bunch of opinions that people will cling to as fact no matter what.

so i scoured the web searching for information on chavez. mostly i found stuff that links to this current hullabaloo…and i found some stuff that dealt with the problems he (and venezuela) had in 2002 with the strikes and instability…but then i found a piece that was more in line with what a friend of mine – working on his masters in latin america studies- told me. this article talked about, not a communist tie, but radical social reform.

the piece (not a hard news piece) dove into notions of social reform that are more common to places like cuba and sri lanka, but not so much here. things like free medicine, doctors and dentists for the poor, literacy programs, a redistribution of oil wealth that for years was kept to the elite while the masses suffered.

what i feel like pat old boy was trying to get america to “off” was less the man – but more the idea that people should have certain rights just because they were born. clean water, safety, education, health…

i’m in a class called health and development economics – right now we’re discussing how typically GNP/GNI was used to measure development of countries. in the 90s that thinking changed and people started looking at quality of life. the new measurement (physical quality of life index- PQLI) takes into account infant mortality rates, life expectancy, and literacy rates – to health indicators and an education one. the thinking is that those things tell about the way a society is constructed and what people can do within that society. using PQLI sri lanka and cuba fair pretty well, much higher than their sputtering GNPs would indicate.

i can’t help but wonder what amazing things might come out of a country that has the dedication to social issues and a GNP to support it.

in all this talk about pat and chavez and a call to murder…i hope someone brings up just what pat is looking to kill.